Tags
Posted by Rob Herman at September 19th, 2006
The enormous, fundamental difference between a collectible card game (CCG) and an ordinary board or card game is, of course, that the rules for a CCG are (mostly) written on the cards themselves, whereas for most other games, the rules are external. The reasons for this are twofold: first, the rules for a CCG are inherently much more complex; second, you can’t print all the rules for a CCG in one place, because new cards keep getting added—that’s why it’s collectible. It’s amusing to think of, say, a chess set where the Bishop is a little square token that reads “Bishop: Moves any number of squares along a diagonal line.” Or “King of Hearts: Counts as a Heart. If played to a trick where a Heart is led, wins the trick, unless a trump or the Ace of Hearts is played.” It’s equally amusing to think of an alternate-universe Magic where the card just reads, “Lightning Bolt” and you have to consult the rulebook (which would be a massive collection of three-ring binders at this point) to figure out that that spell is an instant that does 3 damage to a target creature or player.
One unusual property of CCGs is that the cards sometimes include “tags.” Tags are labels that have no effect under the base rules of the game; they are important only when referred to by other cards. For example, Magic features the card Llanowar Dead, which is a “Creature: Zombie Elf.” Creature is defined in the rulebook, but neither Zombie nor Elf means anything. Except that there are effects that refer specifically to these tags; for instance, the Zombie Lord that gives bonuses to Zombies, or the Priest of Titania that produces more mana the more Elves are in play. In another CCG, Legend of the Five Rings, Personalities tend to have a bunch of so-called “traits.” Some have rulebook effects (like Samurai, which lets you commit seppuku to cleanse your dishonor, or Cavalry, which lets you avoid enemy defenses) but others don’t; the Magistrate trait, say, does nothing on its own, but the Writ of Justice might work better if you put it on a Magistrate.
Reader John Rhoadhouse asked me if any other genres of games use this style of tagging. Well, RPGs certainly do. For instance, in D&D, some spells might be tagged as “mind-affecting.” These spells don’t work any different than other spells—except that, say, golems and zombies are specifically immune to mind-affecting spells.
But outside of RPGs? I can’t think of any examples of this. If there were any, it would be the sign either of a game that was crossing the line into being a CCG or RPG (like Illuminati or HeroQuest) or was getting tremendously overcomplicated. Any reasonably ordinary board game would find a way to either fold any given tag into the main rules, if it were important, or else leave it out as one more unnecessary complication.
Munchkin. Chez Geek. Killer Bunnies - non-collectible, expandable card games often have tags that only serve as references for other cards. For example, in Munchkin there are several items that are only useable by characters of a certain class, but being of that class doesn’t give any inherent bonuses beyond what that class’s card specifically spells out.
Tags are a good way to introduce thematic & flavor elements into the mechanics of a game without overwhelming them. As long as you’re going to have an item that gives Bonus X to Specific Card Y for Z amount of time, you might as well have it be Lembas that only affects Wood Elves until their next meal.
The problem with tags is twofold, especially in a CCG environment.
1) They work retroactively - if you have a card that grants specific bonuses to Magistrates, you’d better make damn sure when you print it that there aren’t any Magistrates from a previous set that break from this card. In reverse, it also means that when you print a Magistrate from now on, you need to design it with this card in mind.
2) What constitutes a tag? Is it the card title? Is it a word appearing anywhere in the card text? If you have an Elf King, and he gives a bonus to all Elves, you’d better make sure it specifies whether or not the bonus applies to him. Does it apply to an Elfslayer? It has Elf in the title… Does it apply to an item that gives a bonus to an Elf (the word Elf is in the card text)?
Both of these problems have led to trouble in both Magic & L5R. The 2nd problem can be overcome by very careful templating and a thorough design document (necessary for professional CCG design). The 1st is a constant concern for new card design, and only increases the more tags you create.
The thing I find interesting about M:tG specifically is that effects can “hone” in an creatures for almost any property: color, casting cost, type, subtype, creature effect cost, etc. This means that everything on the card that’s not a picture or flavor text (I’m not counting Unglued) might be considered a flavorless “tag”, a sub-classification of the creature that does not really tell you all that much about what the creature is. I’ve always wondered how this doesn’t get out of hand — for instance, there are many black zombies with power / toughness in the 2-3 range. If we want to make a card that affects zombies, doesn’t that mean that we now need to look at any card that may apply to all zombies, whether or not the card explicitly says “Do (effect) to all Zombies” or “Do (effect) to all black creatures” or “Do (effect) to all 2/2 creatures”? This seems ridiculously complicated to me, especially in M:tG, which has a HUGE existing card base to consider.
The answer to the first point that qualistarian brought up at least as far as magic is concerned is that Wizards on the Coast (WotC) only considers the past core set, the next core set, the previous expansion block and the next expansion block when printing a card. This is because those are the cards that the current set will be in “Type II” tournaments with. Tournament formats which draw from larger card pools (like Type I) are already vastly dominated by decks that are not exactly “fair”. Also if a card is powerful enough to break type I odds are it will break type II as well. As far as casual play is concerned well that is up to the players on how crazy they want their casual games to be.
Qualistarian brings up a good point though particularly with Chez Geek. While I don’t consider Chez Geek to be pinnacle of game rule elegance they do a good job with tags on “things” in paticular such as “smokes”, “food”, “books” etc… This lets cards like ‘Bum’ exist that steals a “smokes” card from another player. I’ve often seen games that need tags like these and don’t use them relaying on the players “common sense” to rule on if the card that says “win a battle against any orc” can be used during the “Merry and Pippin captured by goblins” event. In that paticular example the game rules stated that this event was indeed a battle but the jury is still out on if goblins are orcs.
Not exactly a CCG, but I found myself using tags the second time I played 1000 Blank White Cards. People often like making cards that a related, like defenestration. What makes tages so useful is that they are precise. Players can argue whether the “venus fly trap” is a plant effected by the “Kyoto Protocols,” but if the creator puts “(plant)” on the card it becomes clearer.
I see two good uses for tags. The first is a shorthand for a rule in the rule book like “banding.” The second is for use in an expandable game. Tags allow the various sets to work together better. As long as the rules clearly define what is and is not a tag and for what pruposes, the game meshes better over time.
Oops. Chez Geek and Munchkin both use tags quite well, yes.
My very first 1KBWC card actually used a tag, now that Beaker mentions it: One With Everything, which awarded +800 points and the Enlightened trait. Unfortunately Enlightened didn’t do anything until Fuleng created One With Nothing, which was worth -1000 points to an Enlightened player.
As an interesting note, currently Wizards of the Coast is trying to reduce the number of ‘tags’ that are shorthand for rules in Magic, and instead are replacing them with ‘ability words’ that are pure reminder text. These ‘psuedo-tags’ have no game effect and are primarily a way to associate the cards with each other in the player’s minds. For example, Threshold has been booted out of the rule book, and a card that originally read: (as a reminder, everything in italics in a magic card is flavor or reminder text, and has no game effect)
Threshold — Metamorphic Wurm gets +4/+4. (You have threshold as long as seven or more cards are in your graveyard.)
is now worded:
Threshold — Metamorphic Wurm gets +4/+4 as long as seven or more cards are in your graveyard.
There are several advantages to new approach. First, every card says exactly what it does, and there’s no wondering exactly exactly how the given mechanic works for this card. In this example, it’s straightforward, but in cases when a card gets an ability when it has Threshold, and cards are removed from its owner’s graveyard between when the ability is put on the stack and when it is resolved, the answer was look in the rulebook. Well, now the card has to tell you. Also, the design team can introduce these psuedo-tags freely, without worrying about cluttering the rulebook with too many keywords.
example stolen from the wizards’ website
Well, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch the idea, lots of games, especially digital, use ‘tagging’ of some sort, even if it’s as simple as “Fire attacks deal extra damage to ice enemies”.
They do make my life a lot easier in RPGs, though - look at Exalted 2nd Edition, where they added keywords to Charms. Made a lot of things much clearer and less confusing, including some of the infamously non-intuitive parts of 1st Ed, like Combos.